2013/4 season ticket prices and entrance fees announced

[bixieupnorth]

£15 max in 4th division, £18 next league up, £22 champs and £25 premiership, no one should need to charge more given the amount of money that there is flying about in football these days, its not the sport of the working man any more

btw got the latest issue of STAND today, top read, great movement

http://www.standamf.com/

[ROADRUNNER]

sorry people but for once i have to agree with ferrari here, the club cant do right whatever they do and as i understand why everyone is angry and fustrated at the moment and this aint helping, its just all the negativity on here about probably not going so much next season and picking what games your going to, what happened to supporting our club, eh!, i dont want to get in to how we got in to this position because we all know that but im sorry and im sure people will slate me for this but i like many have gone through all this before , christ look at the dave webb era that has to be the worst ever but we are still here today because the club has fans like you and me who stick through thick and thin and without us there will be no club so if you want your club to dissapear just stop going because without you thats what will happen.

[budleigh]

£15 max in 4th division, £18 next league up, £22 champs and £25 premiership

Out of interest, what are you basing these figures on? Or are they just plucked from the air?

[bixieupnorth]

no its just what i think a realistic pricing structure should be, some of the prices i've had to pay this season are ridiculous, then you go to burton and they charge £14-15 and it just makes you feel right about the world!!

[budleigh]

no its just what i think a realistic pricing structure should be

Just as well you're not running the finances at Plainmoor then!

[bixieupnorth]

true mate!! i'd love to see how much difference it'd make to attendances throughout the league if my pricing structure could be applied, i'd also have £2 a programme, £1 for a cuppa etc

unfortunately it'd never happen, i had being ripped off by anyone, but willingly give my membership donation without expecting anything in return, so i'm nowhere near being tight, but just appreciate value for money and not being taken for an idiot, so you'll never ever catch me queuing for food at plainmoor, beer thats a different set of rules tho apparently, i was even caught paying £3.50/pint for guinness on st pats night and i'm not even irish!

[budleigh]

i was even caught paying £3.50/pint for guinness on st pats night and i'm not even irish!

Now that is value for money!

[bixieupnorth]

like i say beer holds a strange sway over me and i seem to be willing to pay well over the odds for that when necessary!!

[AustrianAndyGull]

I agree to a certain extent with Matt but more so with Bix. Matt you are right when you say that most things are more expensive than they should be but then as a consequence we as individuals can choose to take it or leave it. I might be in a train station and fancy a bottle of pop and a pasty and it would cost about a fiver so i then choose not to have them. If they were £3.50 or something reasonable then my arm could be twisted. It's like when i am looking for a day out with my little un like a wildlife park or kidies theme park or something. Some of them charge way more than the product is actually worth such as £15 per adult or something when the adults don't actually go on the f*cking rides or a tenner for kids which when you've got a 2 year old it can't even see a f*cking animal let alone get up and walk round!! So you go somewhere cheaper on a more regular basis and only go the 'preferred' destination as a treat. Take a cinema, IMO going to watch a film nowadays is an absolute scandal in terms of cost and i never hardly go, i'll just wait for the DVD to come out. Even the ones that go to the cinema don't go most weeks which is what we are asking Torquay fans to do and pay cinema prices every time for the privelege if you see what i mean?

We can NEVER hope to encourage the floaters with prices like these and run a very big risk of making frequent visitors to Plainmoor as it is now, more INFREQUENT visitors to Plainmoor. Some of these may then go on to stop going altogether. Also i don't think it's ok to just accept that things are more expensive than they should be so just pay it and shut up. If i pay what is too much for my car insurance then i shop around and find somewhere cheaper, if i pay too much to watch Torquay and the product offers me nothing in return to the point of making me not want to go i may seek out another non league club to go and see on a saturday and not Torquay. Personally i could NEVER do that but some people HAVE and some people WILL.

I'll never know what a fine balance it is between acceptable ticket prices and financial losses but football fans are becoming increasingly frustrated and disenfranchised by their own clubs and harbour a growing sense of bitterness and anger towards them. Like Bix says, Burton charge £14 or £15 to stand and i think that £15 is spot on for a standing ticket anywhere in the lower leagues. Seats should be £17 to £18 . It's about value. Programmes also, they are now £3 nearly everywhere now and for what is in a lot of them you may as well buy the Daily Star and save yourself £2.50. Many are a disgrace and programme contributors need to do some research on what fans actually want in them. Hereford away last season sprigs to mind, that day i purchased a programme and a criminal activity was committed against me. Gobsmackingly dreadful. Again, i don't know if it is increased printing costs or some other hidden cost that make programmes cost £3 but they should be £2 OR £2.50 absolute max. I know you could argue i'm being finicky over 50p but when you've often got travel costs on top, food costs and so on, a day out at the football EVERY time you go to home game can soon rack up depending on your circumstances qnd loction. There is no way in 2013 that ANY football ground should be charging more than £1 for a cup of tea or coffee and a sausage roll should be £1.50 or£1.75 NOT £2 or £2.50!! Pies should be £2. Football clubs are always adding 'extra' onto 'extra' and hoping we'll pay it so they can more money but a lot of us cannot keep finding more and more money so we are going to decide not to buy that pie or that coffee. I never do wherever i go generally as i prefer to take my own food in the car. I'll watch the game for 90 minutes then do an audition for a place on tv's 'Secret Eaters' in my car on the way home. Before i enter a football ground i'm a stone lighter than i am when i've got home!!

I've babbled i know but in short, ticket prices are too high, assorted sundries at football grounds are too high. I know they are also high at zoos and theme parks also but those places don't rely on the same people coming week in week out and these regulars are finding in increasing numbers that they can't keep doing this without some reward or help from the club. The club HAVE to find alternative ways of generating income. Why don't they appoint a full time fundraiser type person that many charities do to implement innovative ideas to get more cash coming in to the club? Someone who could be working his backside off out and abut in the bay wheeling and dealing? They could have a basic salary and a cut of any extra income over a certain threshold?

Might be a dodgy idea but i'd rather the club try something leftfield than taking the safe option of ripping the fans off once more.

[gullno4]

non league football is looking expensive for us fans then !!

[AustrianAndyGull]

Apologies for the spelling mistakes and grammar, i was in a rush and i can't be arsed to go back and rectify them.

[ROADRUNNER]

surely it the same for plymouth fan? dont see them putting prices down if they drop.

[MidDevon]

Here are the facts, even with Exeter City and Plymouth Argyle in league 2, Plaimoor has been on average 40.8% full this season

http://stats.football365.co.uk/dom/ENG/D3/attend.html


Relegation could kill off this club. I'm sure with local derby's against Forest Green, Tamworth and Hereford as appose to Argyle, Exeter and The Gas next season this figure will drop like a stone. If the club are THAT desperate to take an extra few thousand then they are in a much more dire situation than they are letting on.

Just 2 "directors" joining on shall we say £5,000 each would probably make up the difefrence.

....and people claim on here the board is in touch....don't take the P&£$. You may want to think they are but step back, take a deep breath and perhaps admit this just may not be the case.

The decision to increase some prices and keep most prices the same if the club fall into the Conference is farsical

[ferrarilover]

So, those (especially you, you Austrian git!) saying it should be, say, £15 instead of £19 or whatever it is now. 20 years ago, we were in Division 4, exactly the same place we will be next season, but I'll bet it was about a tenner to get in. If someone had asked you how much it should have been then, would you have said £15 was reasonable or would you have said that it should have been about £8?

Everyone always thinks everything is X% too high or too low. The 70mph motorway limit should be 80mph, as if 80mph actually means something and isn't merely 'a little bit faster than now', but if the limit was 60, people would be howling that 70mph was a nice speed. Similarly if the limit was 100mph, no one would cruise at 80 like they do now, because that would be 'far too slow'.

Face it, we live in (almost) the most expensive country in the world. Aside from a few crazy, gold plated Arab nations (all funded by your £1.45/litre fuel), England is the most expensive place on Earth to live. Have a look next time you're shopping for an international product. Go to the American website and see how much your gadget is in USD, then have a look at the English version and, with about a 70% success rate, you'll find that the retailer here charges in GBP the same as they charge in USD in the States, despite a Dollar being worth just 65p. Sales tax in America varies by State, but it's between 5-10%, ours is 20%. Stuff is more money to start with, then the Government want a bigger wedge also.

Think yourselves lucky that with the crowds we get, the club are able to offer (mainly) competitive football on one of the smallest budgets going. If it's expensive to sit in the Bench (it's not, it's just the same as everywhere else), then I consider that a price worth paying, given that it is the best of its kind I have seen. Think back to the posh seats at Old Trafford where, unless you were Mini-Me, you couldn't actually fit. What are they on a match day, £100? The Bench is a fifth of that and I could, reasonably, have a friend sat on my lap throughout and STILL have plenty of room, as well as an unobstructed view (Southend/Barnet take note) and be under cover (Filth/Accrington take note).
If we wanted to have the same levels of finance as, say, Plymouth or Northampton or Rovers, we'd probably need to be charging £40+ to get in, so to be in the same division, and often finishing above these sides, while STILL providing officially the second cheapest football is the Country is quite an achievement.

Man City are the biggest cheats going in terms of entry fees, followed shortly by Chelsea. These owners have so much money they could, quite reasonably, burn £50 notes to keep warm 24/7 for 100 years and still not even really notice. Yet they see fit to charge three figure sums to blokes from Manchester who are not only afflicted with a silly accent, but also are permanently out on strike, complaining about Thatcher or conditions down t'pit. They earn just enough for gruel and water twice a week, yet these bloody Arabs want to charge a huge sum that they don't actually need, so they can give that money to other blokes who have so much money they don't know what to do with it, all for the sake of hacking a ball round a field for an hour and a half.

Taking the last couple of years, rather than this, which has been an exceptionally bad year, the football served up at Plainmoor was, by and large, at least as exciting and 80-90% as good as the average Premier League match. Yet to get into these grounds is 4 or 5 times as much money. Football at this level is excellent value for money. Obviously, less so when we're not playing well, but in the main, Torquay fans get a much better deal than about 99% of other clubs.

Yes, a Volvo XC90 at £30,000 is expensive when Tata Nano is 50p, but then, it's exceptionally good value when you think the new Range Rover is over £100,000.

There are so many things we have to be thankful for in terms of the pricing alone at Plainmoor and it's a little bit sad that some among us are using it as a stick to bash the Board based on some numbers which are essentially plucked out of thin air and only so done because we are doing badly and we need a scapegoat.

Matt.

[AustrianAndyGull]

So, those (especially you, you Austrian git!) saying it should be, say, £15 instead of £19 or whatever it is now. 20 years ago, we were in Division 4, exactly the same place we will be next season, but I'll bet it was about a tenner to get in. If someone had asked you how much it should have been then, would you have said £15 was reasonable or would you have said that it should have been about £8?

Everyone always thinks everything is X% too high or too low. The 70mph motorway limit should be 80mph, as if 80mph actually means something and isn't merely 'a little bit faster than now', but if the limit was 60, people would be howling that 70mph was a nice speed. Similarly if the limit was 100mph, no one would cruise at 80 like they do now, because that would be 'far too slow'.

Face it, we live in (almost) the most expensive country in the world. Aside from a few crazy, gold plated Arab nations (all funded by your £1.45/litre fuel), England is the most expensive place on Earth to live. Have a look next time you're shopping for an international product. Go to the American website and see how much your gadget is in USD, then have a look at the English version and, with about a 70% success rate, you'll find that the retailer here charges in GBP the same as they charge in USD in the States, despite a Dollar being worth just 65p. Sales tax in America varies by State, but it's between 5-10%, ours is 20%. Stuff is more money to start with, then the Government want a bigger wedge also.

Think yourselves lucky that with the crowds we get, the club are able to offer (mainly) competitive football on one of the smallest budgets going. If it's expensive to sit in the Bench (it's not, it's just the same as everywhere else), then I consider that a price worth paying, given that it is the best of its kind I have seen. Think back to the posh seats at Old Trafford where, unless you were Mini-Me, you couldn't actually fit. What are they on a match day, £100? The Bench is a fifth of that and I could, reasonably, have a friend sat on my lap throughout and STILL have plenty of room, as well as an unobstructed view (Southend/Barnet take note) and be under cover (Filth/Accrington take note).
If we wanted to have the same levels of finance as, say, Plymouth or Northampton or Rovers, we'd probably need to be charging £40+ to get in, so to be in the same division, and often finishing above these sides, while STILL providing officially the second cheapest football is the Country is quite an achievement.

Man City are the biggest cheats going in terms of entry fees, followed shortly by Chelsea. These owners have so much money they could, quite reasonably, burn £50 notes to keep warm 24/7 for 100 years and still not even really notice. Yet they see fit to charge three figure sums to blokes from Manchester who are not only afflicted with a silly accent, but also are permanently out on strike, complaining about Thatcher or conditions down t'pit. They earn just enough for gruel and water twice a week, yet these bloody Arabs want to charge a huge sum that they don't actually need, so they can give that money to other blokes who have so much money they don't know what to do with it, all for the sake of hacking a ball round a field for an hour and a half.

Taking the last couple of years, rather than this, which has been an exceptionally bad year, the football served up at Plainmoor was, by and large, at least as exciting and 80-90% as good as the average Premier League match. Yet to get into these grounds is 4 or 5 times as much money. Football at this level is excellent value for money. Obviously, less so when we're not playing well, but in the main, Torquay fans get a much better deal than about 99% of other clubs.

Yes, a Volvo XC90 at £30,000 is expensive when Tata Nano is 50p, but then, it's exceptionally good value when you think the new Range Rover is over £100,000.

There are so many things we have to be thankful for in terms of the pricing alone at Plainmoor and it's a little bit sad that some among us are using it as a stick to bash the Board based on some numbers which are essentially plucked out of thin air and only so done because we are doing badly and we need a scapegoat.

Matt.

Ah, thanks mate.

To be honest Matt, i don't think i'm clever enough for this debate. Like a lot of things i haven't thought it through properly.

I'm a fairly basic person and i just think that the current prices at Plainmoor, although comparably favourable to many other clubs is tad too high. No seating ticket should be above £20 in league 2 and no terrace ticket should be above £15 in my humble opinion but i'm not bashing the board. This should be for all clubs across certainly the bottom 2 divisions. I have no problems also paying £15 to stand if we were in the BSP as i think it is a fair amount.

Anyway it's just my opinion but it's a tricky one as the club are trying to get fans to come to Plainmoor more than once rather than say a company who charges way over the odds for a product a consumer may only purchase once. A fan has to keep going back to that same product and if they ( in their minds ) are paying over the odds on a continual basis then at somepoint they will begin to question this and act accordingly.

Cheers Matty!